New Mobile App Streamlines Dealership Management

Fiat Chrysler Group is the first automaker in Australia to begin using a new locally designed app throughout its dealer network that streamlines the process of conducting customer test drives and managing loan vehicles.

Michael Webb and Paul Willson used their combined 30 years in the auto industry to design the app, called Dealer Drive. They spent four years perfecting the app for tablets and smartphones they say addresses the core needs of the automotive industry.

Webb says Dealer Drive gives dealerships an edge.

“The ability to view data in real-time allows both dealers and manufacturers to make quicker, more informed decisions,” he says in a statement. “Dealers can easily track and measure their operational effectiveness, reduce costs and improve sales.”

It also allows manufacturers to measure marketing-campaign effectiveness, monitor the performance of the entire dealer network and better support it with various marketing, sales and staff training initiatives.

“Automating the test-drive and loan vehicle process ensures our customers are always receiving the highest level of service from our dealers while at the same time offering the dealers newfound initiatives to drive efficiency in their businesses,” Fiat Chrysler Group President and CEO Veronica Johns says.

Webb is a former Mercedes-Benz Australia Pacific regional sales manager and more recently held a senior position with a Mercedes-Benz-owned dealership in Melbourne. Willson is a co-founder of EPH Group, one of Australia’s largest plant-hire agencies. He started his career working for his father’s award-winning automotive franchise dealership.

The process using Dealer Drive begins with the salesperson entering the customer’s details, logging that information against the vehicle being driven. The customer’s license is photographed and saved to the application and to the vehicle being test driven or loaned.

For test drives specifically, Dealer Drive electronically records details of the drive including route and time taken – from the moment the vehicle leaves the dealership until the time it returns. A similar process applies to loan vehicles.

By electronically logging who is in a vehicle at any point in time, the dealership can cross-check the routes – including dates and times – allowing traffic-infringement notices to be easily assigned to the relevant person.

Using the smartphone or tablet’s camera, photographs can be taken of any vehicle damage before the test drive commences or the vehicle is loaned, as well as at the end of the drive or return of the loan vehicle. These photographs are logged against that vehicle and customer assigned to the vehicle at that time.

When all information has been entered, the customer digitally signs the dealership’s terms and conditions directly onto the salesperson’s device acknowledging the information entered against the vehicle is correct.

At the end of a test drive, Dealer Drive automatically sends an email to the customer requesting feedback. Another feature allows the dealer to send emails to all potential customers who have driven particular vehicles in order to gauge their current level of interest.

The more the app is used, the greater the data capture.

All test drives and loan vehicles logged in Dealer Drive provide the dealership with intuitive reports, helping them identify the success rate of test drives – whether longer test drives yield greater sales or fewer sales, the individual performance of sales staff and the customer’s overall rating of the vehicle.

Webb says benefits Dealer Drive offers OEMs and dealerships are enormous.

“The significant time and cost savings, reduction of manual handling, sophisticated level of reporting and the sheer ease of accessing much-needed customer and vehicle data, significantly outweighs the cost of the app itself,” he says.

The company is offering a free trial of Dealer Drive for download from iTunes and Google Play.